Darkness be my friend
The group tries to live a normal life in New Zealand with other refugees, but are haunted by the war (which is still ongoing). Five months after arriving in the country they are approached by Colonel Finley of the New Zealand Defence Force, who is seeking Australian guerrillas to act as guides for Kiwi SAS units which are being dropped into occupied Australian territory to act as guerrillas. Ellie is initially reluctant to agree but after a drunken one night stand by a New Zealand student at a party she decides to go, hoping that participating in the war effort will help her recover some sense of self worth. The group returns Wirrawee accompanied by a platoon of crack special forces troops. The SAS troops go missing while on a mission to destroy Wirrawee Airfield (which was being used as a major military airbase), and while searching for them, Ellie's group is spotted and forced to flee. Lee had been guiding the group of New Zealand soldiers, and gets separated from the main group on the night of the planned attack. Retreating, they decide to take shelter in their old high school rather than going all the way back to Hell, and after reuniting with Lee, he passes on information about their parents to them and tells them his own parents were killed due to them having an argument with a guard at the show ground. This happened in front of Lee's siblings, who are still being held at the show ground, being looked after by other adults still imprisoned and trapped there. After his parents die he becomes emotionally colder and more independent. He also starts to put others in danger, possibly because he doesn't value his life very much. When he passes on this information, he reveals that one of them (Fi) may be able to see her parents, which results in a clandestine reunion between Mr & Mrs Maxwell and their daughter in the botanical gardens fernery not too far from the high school. They can only speak for about twenty minutes- as long as Fi's parents are allowed for their lunch- and Ellie is unsure if the reunion is a good thing or not. Around the same time, Lee takes Ellie to the local cemetery, where he points out to her Corrie's grave- Corrie had died a few months earlier, presumably while the rest of the group were in New Zealand. Ellie seems to have a minor breakdown, and turns to Lee for comfort. The group uses a two-pronged attack against the local airfield (which had been the target of the SAS unit), one plan trying to destroy the airfield outright, and another to sabotage the planes by putting sugar in their fuel. However, a combination of ill-planning, over-confidence, and bad luck cause both their plans to fail, and are forced to flee back to Hell. The group then makes radio contact with Colonel Finley in New Zealand, who tells them that they have no chance of extraction and will have to return to their old life in occupied territory (camping in Hell).